The Rangers have had a philosophy of filling in their depth from within. They feel they can acquire a few top end players to offset the hard working blue collar players they develop. I don't see how it hasn't worked up to this point.

The drafting philosophy you want to divert from was the reason the Rangers were able to acquire Nash and not skip a beat.

They want players who will play Ranger hockey. That's hard nosed, 2way hockey. They take chances on players later in the draft and use their higher picks to draft more sure fire players. Size is a factor because of the necessity to play that style I described above. Unfortunately a player like Grimaldi would find that difficult

That's not necessarily a bad philosophy when you've got the cash assets, history, and market to lure the big names. While the signing megastars route didn't work for the Rangers in the late 90s and early 2000s when they were only signing stars, now that they've begun to build a solid core of hard working talented 2nd and 3rd liners, the "icing on the cake" approach to FA does seem to be working.